On the main floor, Reive glanced out into the lobby. It was nearly deserted, without any sign of anyone who might be there to watch them. Still, taking no chances, he went down the hall toward the back instead, and through a door marked Passagio di servizio. This got them yelled at in Italian, but with profuse apologies in English and Latin, and their best innocent-tourist looks, they hurried out a loading door and found themselves in a narrow side street.
"You said drive?" Jess asked. "Aren't we going to take a bus?"
"I think a car would be easier. Much more chance to see if we're being followed and shake a tail."
They definitely didn't seem to have a tail now. They went quickly to the nearest bus stop and caught a bus to the first car rental agency that looked like it might have what Reive wanted.
And he wanted something specific. Well, make and model didn't matter so much, but if he was going to drive Jess around Italy, he didn't plan on doing it in a Hyundai.
"Bring me your most expensive convertible, please," he said to the English-speaking clerk at the counter, and Jess's eyes went round.
The car was an Audi, small and sleek and black, with a powerful, growling engine. Reive's dragon approved as soon as he got behind the wheel. It was the same feeling as driving a motorcycle, a feeling almost like flying.
He was going to have to shift gears a lot, but he found that he could do it adequately enough with his fingers loosely curled and the pressure of his palm to pop the gearshift from one position to another. With the glove on, he clumsily scribbled a loose signature on the various pieces of paperwork with the pen clamped between his stiff and inert second and third finger—"Born this way," he explained to the clerk. He noticed Jess's sharp gaze following his gloved hand around.
It still felt uncomfortable lying to her. He didn't care what random strangers thought, but he did care what Jess thought.
Fortunately the car was right there as a distraction. "What do you think?" he asked her.
"I can't believe you're doing this. Can you afford it? What am I saying, I keep forgetting your family is loaded. Do you always travel like this?"
"But you like it?" The words came out hopeful. He really did want her to like it. It felt as if he and his dragon were gently shoving it in her direction, like a courting offering from the hoard he didn't have.
"Reive—it's amazing. Of course I love it. I've never been in a car like this in my life." She put her bag in the back, and cautiously felt around the seat, finding the adjustment levers. "I feel like I'm in a Bond movie or something."
"Wait 'til we put the top down and go cruising in the countryside," he said, and threw the car into gear.
Jess
Jess honestly couldn't remember when she'd had this much fun in her entire life.
She was glad Reive was driving in the city, as he fought his way through heavy traffic full of manic drivers. But once they were out of the city on a country highway, the car nearly flew.
They drove through suburbs at first, but eventually they were out in the tawny countryside, driving past fields of olives and sunflowers, past farmhouses with terra-cotta tile roofs and fields full of lazy cows, gas stations and gated industrial yards; past forests and lakes and railroad bridges and surprisingly rugged hills.
She had expected Italy to be beautiful, but she hadn't expected so much of it to be this wild. She'd had a mental image of rolling hills covered with neat ranks of olive trees. There were definitely those, but there were also places where the trees pressed close to the road and they might almost be back in the woodsier parts of Indiana, except for the particular fierce clarity of the light.
They had the top down. The hot wind tangled her hair and threatened to blow her sunglasses away.
It was wonderful. It would have been perfect, if not for one thing.
Reive drove casually, with his left hand draped over the steering wheel and his gloved right hand resting on the gearshift. Despite the heat of the day, he hadn't even unzipped the heavy leather jacket.
"Reive," she said cautiously. "Your, er—your friend, the one who was hurt by a gargoyle. What happened?"
Reive glanced at her. She was glad her sunglasses hid her eyes.
"Are you sure you don't mind hearing the story?"
"We've got a drive ahead of us. It'd be a good way to pass the time."
"It's really not that much of a story anyway." He looked ahead as he navigated a turn in the road. "It happened at my aunt's place in Greece, a while back. It was a family vacation, so we had all ages there, right down to little kids and my very pregnant step-cousin. The gargoyles attacked us out of nowhere, unprovoked."
Little kids. A pregnant cousin. Jess swallowed. "They must have had a reason," she said, and then kicked herself for defending them.
"Oh, sure they had a reason," Reive said, anger lacing his words. "They were working with my—with a usurper to help him take over my clan from our rightful clanlord. So yeah, they had a reason, but not one that'd make you want to invite them to the neighborhood barbecue."
Jess swallowed, her fingernails digging into her leg. She realized with horror that their tips had begun to change to claws in response to her emotional agitation, and fought back the change; there would be no worse time and place to turn into a gargoyle than right here. "And your, uh, your friend was hurt defending the others?"
She could very easily picture Reive throwing himself into danger to protect a bunch of kids and a pregnant woman. It seemed very him.
"Yeah, he got hit with some poison spikes. Nobody realized at first what was happening to him. They just thought he'd been poisoned, like from a snake bite, but he shook it off okay. We didn't know 'til later that it was worse, so much worse than we thought."
Jess looked down at her hands in her lap. Was she poisonous to the touch? She didn't have any way of knowing. Maybe all this time, if she had accidentally transformed and touched Marion or one of the kids who came to the library ... She shuddered in horror.
She truly was a monster.
"What about the rest of the family?" she asked. "Are they looking for a cure too?"
"They don't know," Reive said. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, looking at the road, not at her. "My friend didn't want them to know. The only person who knows is me."
Which, given her suspicions, was even more literal than he probably wanted her to think. Jess blinked back tears.
Why are you dealing with this all alone? If I had a big close-knit family who loved me, I can't imagine ending up sick and alone on the other side of the world, with no one even knowing what was happening to me.
But he was alone. Just like her.
"Reive," she said quietly. After checking to make sure the claws were completely gone, she placed her hand on his leg, carefully avoiding his arm. "We will find a cure, I promise you. If Signor Romano doesn't have it, we'll keep looking as long as it takes. We'll find a way to fix your friend."
And hopefully along with it, a way to turn me fully human, so I will never be in danger of hurting anyone ever again.
It was afternoon when they began to approach the address Jess's phone had given them, in the same long glorious golden light they had admired yesterday. The hills lay in humps of dusty gold and green, rolling like the backs of vast tawny lions lying side by side.